By Sarah Osborne
None of the $650,000 earmarked for paramedic station relocations will be allocated to Centretown this year, but Jean-Pierre Trottier, spokesman for Ottawa’s ambulance service, says emergency coverage in Centretown will not be affected.
Replacing the station at the corner of Gladstone Avenue and Cambridge Street has been on the city’s agenda book for the last few years, since according to Trottier, the rent is very high.
“The rent we pay for Gladstone would in four to five years pay for construction of a new post,” says Trottier. He says paramedic stations cost at least $250,000 to build, and more if the city has to buy land first.
A private owner built the station for the province, says Trottier. When paramedic services were handed down to the cities, so were the lease and the rent.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes says the city was considering building a new station on a piece of land by the CN Rail line at the western edge of the ward. But now that the city is considering expanding the O-Train and putting in a new station, they want to save the land for future development, such as an apartment building.
Instead, the $650,000 earmarked for moving the Gladstone paramedic station will be used to relocate and renovate other stations around the city. Trottier says the stations in Kanata, Nepean-Bells Corners, and possibly the one crammed into a little garage at the Queensway-Carleton location, will be using the money instead.
Holmes says the owner of the station will probably rent the building to someone else once the city moves out in a few years.
“I don’t think the owner will have any problem converting it into what it needs to be converted to,” Trottier says.
He adds that the building is in a prime location and is quite large with three bays, a small office, locker room, lunchroom, and bathroom.
Although the location of the station serves Centretown quite well, ambulance service is not spread out enough for the city’s liking.
The city wants paramedics to respond to calls in less than nine minutes.
The coverage of the Catherine Street and the Gladstone Avenue stations actually overlap in some areas.
Moving the station further west, perhaps even out of Somerset Ward, will not affect ambulance response time in Centretown, but it may help out other parts of the city, says Darryl Wilton, president of the Professional Paramedic Association of Ottawa.
The next permanent station west of Gladstone is in Bells Corners. South of the station, the next paramedic station is at Hunt Club.
Paramedic stations have to be in the centre of their response area, so it can be hard to find a location to put them, says Wilton.
“It’s not like you can tear down any old building to build an ambulance base,” he says.
The city recently began zoning paramedic stations into city plans the same way police and fire service are to set aside space for stations that will be needed in the future.
Wilton says the paramedics association has no advice to give the city about where the new station should be built because the association deals mostly with personnel issues.
Trottier says the Gladstone station will definitely stay open until a new location is found.